friday night 595 DEN-SFO. A single gate agent working a nearly full flight, with about 20 people from the later SFO flight wanting to standby. Add to that, crew was late from their incoming flight. Finally we begin boarding about 20 minutes late. The flight is clearly going to be absolutely full and of course the chaos of people fighting over overhead bin space.

At 30 minutes past the time the flight was to leave, they are still boarding standbys. this continues until indeed they have filled every seat. (by the way, I am not unhappy with United filling their seats, it is what will keep them flying). However we are now approaching an hour past our scheduled departure time. Then the Captain comes on the PA to inform us that they are ready to leave, but that the cargo bay doors are still open because they haven't loaded all the gate checked bags, moreover, some of the cargo crew had been pulled away to 'other duties'. So their we sat. eventually the ground crew made their way back, buttoned up the aircraft, and we left, over an hour late.

To continue seating standbys after the plane is already significantly late, then to not make every effort on the ground to get the flight underway seems a little strange to me. fortunately, the captain made up some time to SFO and we had a little wiggle room on our connection so we made it, but for a while I was a little concerned.